The announcement that the stand-up comedian Nate Bargatze would be hosting Saturday Night Live this weekend was met in some corners with a bit of confusion. When SNL goes the stand-up route for a host, it usually plucks an alum (John Mulaney, for instance) or a household name (Dave Chappelle, for example) to do the job.
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is our Science editor Sarah Laskow. Sarah recently investigated whether salsa is gazpacho—and whether gazpacho is salsa.
The poet Wisława Szymborska was a 16-year-old in Krakow, Poland, when Germany invaded her country in 1939. Everything changed after that: The Nazis banned secondary schools and universities, so she had to finish high school illegally in secret classes. Eventually, after the war, she went to university—and ultimately won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. She kept writing about the long trail of violence through the centuries, and the stories we tell about that violence in hindsight.
The Jewish cemetery in Ferrara, Italy, is a melancholy place nestled against the walls that encircle the medieval city. Its 800 gravestones are bunched in clusters amid overgrown grass, fallen leaves, and brooding trees. The impressive expanse is evidence of what had been, before the Second World War, a large, vibrant Jewish community, now reduced to a few dozen souls.
In early September, Jawan, or “Soldier,” Indian cinema’s latest mega-budget extravaganza, registered the highest opening-day gross in Bollywood history. The film’s success cemented the remarkable renaissance of Shah Rukh Khan, the country’s biggest movie star, after a turbulent phase in the era of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The fight over abortion in Ohio will test whether vulnerable Democrats can turn public support for abortion rights into campaign victories — even if the elections are a year apart.
Some influential conservative groups interpreted those remarks as a call to action, while others said it reflects a basic political reality in Washington.
An intraparty fight over abortion pills could hamper Johnson’s hopes of quickly passing a food and agriculture funding bill.
A quarter of CDC-sponsored wastewater surveillance sites are shut down.
A united Democratic front and five Republicans approved Monica Bertagnolli over Sanders’ objections.
The new strategy UAW President Shawn Fain announced Friday signaled the strike could start having broader implications for the economy.
Democrats are loving the Biden economy. They’re less certain about his economic message.
A free speech battle is playing out on college campuses, as students, professors and others advocating for Palestinian rights across the United States are facing racist attacks and retaliation that threaten their safety and livelihoods. These attacks aim to suppress criticism of Israel and U.S. support of its actions in Gaza. This comes as the U.S. Senate has unanimously passed a resolution “condemning Hamas and antisemitic student activities on college campuses.
According to the latest update from the Israeli military, Hamas is still holding at least 229 hostages captured during its October 7 incursion into southern Israel. The group has stated that they will not release all hostages until Israel agrees to a ceasefire in Gaza. To discuss the release thus far of four hostages and prospects for future releases, we speak to Gershon Baskin, who helped negotiate a critical hostage exchange between Israel and Hamas in 2011.
Palestinian poet Ahmed Abu Artema was seriously injured in an Israeli airstrike on October 24 that also killed five members of his family, including his 12-year-old son. Artema helped inspire the Great March of Return, a series of nonviolent protests in Gaza starting in 2018 when thousands of Palestinians marched to the militarized fence separating them from their ancestral homes inside Israel, braving deadly Israeli sniper fire that killed hundreds and injured thousands more.
UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestine refugees, says it is close to running out of supplies in Gaza, where it is sheltering over 600,000 displaced Palestinians. Israel has claimed that they cannot allow fuel to enter the besieged territory because of the supposed risk of it being appropriated by Hamas.
The former president sees himself as exceptionally pro-Israel, and a majority of attendees at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s summit seemed to agree.
No one alive has seen a race like the 2024 presidential election. For months, if not years, many people have expected a reprise of the 2020 election, a matchup between the sitting president and a former president.But that hasn’t prevented a crowded primary. On the GOP side, more than a dozen candidates are ostensibly vying for the nomination.
The former vice president told attendees that it became clear it was not his time.
Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings or watch full episodes here. The House of Representatives finally has a new speaker. After a bruising battle and several weeks without a leader, Republicans have elected Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana to be the 56th speaker of the House.
A ticktock of Ken Buck’s unusual path from opposing Jim Jordan over his 2020 antics to supporting Mike Johnson for speaker in spite of his 2020 antics.
The issue of funding aid to Kyiv has divided the GOP conference but unified Democrats.
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.“I believe in chasing the ghost of my former lighthearted self,” my colleague Faith Hill wrote last year. And “if there’s one day when I might almost catch up, it’s Halloween: the most ridiculous, inherently childish holiday, and perhaps the one grown-ups need most.
This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine.Jumping spiders are an obsession for me. But it wasn’t always so.Although never a spider hater or an arachnophobe, I was pretty ambivalent about them for most of my life. Then I learned about jumping spiders: I’ve reported on their impressive vision (as good as a cat’s in some ways!), their surprising smarts (they make plans!), and the discovery that they have REM-like sleep (and may even dream!). I was hooked.
On August 16, 1867, a young farmer named Alfred McDonald Sargent Johnson walked into the courthouse of Cherokee County, Georgia. He had an oath to swear.The effects of the Civil War were still visible in Canton, a village of about 200 people and the county seat. For one thing, that makeshift courthouse was inside a Presbyterian church—its predecessor having been torched by William Tecumseh Sherman’s men shortly before their march to the sea.
AI is diagnosing diseases and recommending treatments, but the systems aren’t always regulated like drugs or medical devices.
An intraparty fight over abortion pills could hamper Johnson’s hopes of quickly passing a food and agriculture funding bill.
A quarter of CDC-sponsored wastewater surveillance sites are shut down.
A united Democratic front and five Republicans approved Monica Bertagnolli over Sanders’ objections.
The law governing the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief lapsed this month.